JOHN BUELL

Politics of Drug Wars

Conservatives complain that government metastasizes like cancers.
Programs create new demands for services even as problems grow. This
critique hardly fits such popular and effective programs as Head
Start or Social Security, marked by low administrative costs and
demonstrated track records. Yet the familiar rant does describe one
government program: the drug war.

Both in my home state of Maine and in many other regions citizens
are advocating new or expanded police drug control task forces. They
must be funded in part with local revenues, but even in these tight
times federal matches are still available. A few skeptics worry that
drug treatment will be slighted, but in many communities citizens
seem convinced that greater police efforts against drugs "are at
least a good first step." Yet if these initiatives follow the usual
model, they will increase both public health and social problems.

Drug wars have a bleak history. Movements to ban alcohol
consumption go back to the 19th century. Business leaders, often
striving to force longer working hours on their immigrant employees,
sought to ban the alcohol consumption associated with holidays and
leisure hours. Rather than job safety their major concern was
ensuring a world of work without end. Maine became the first state in
the nation to ban alcohol in 1851.

Former drug czar Bill Bennett has argued that Prohibition reduced
alcohol consumption. Evidence on that is mixed. Prohibition's most
lasting contribution was to increase crime and fund the Mafia. Crime
was then cited as further reason to ban alcohol.

Current initiatives began with Nixon administration effort to
explain and redress growing opposition not only to the Vietnam War
but also to the mainstream culture of work and consumption. In the
years since Nixon, the drug war has morphed into broad efforts to
interdict supplies of drugs, to "educate" the public about their
risks, and to punish both users and suppliers.

Even the least controversial efforts to interrupt supplies have
not only failed, they have also often been counterproductive.
University of Maine economist Mel Burke, a student of both the drug
war and international economic development, points out that in 1962
when opium plantations in Mexico were destroyed, production moved to
Colombia. When marijuana in Colombia was destroyed in 1987,
production migrated to Mexico and the US. Not surprisingly, when
extensive efforts to stamp out marijuana were combined with
exaggerated and distorted messages on marijuana, the illicit drug
trade switched to cocaine, a substance both more dangerous and harder
to interdict.

Burke reminds us that the drug wars have been accompanied by
growing consumption and lower prices for targeted drugs, exactly
contrary to the expectation of the drug warriors. And that war now
consumes over $35 billion in government spending per year and gives
the USA the highest per capita prison population in the world.

If it is hard to imagine a more clear-cut example of big
government failure, why aren't conservatives up in arms?
Unfortunately, the drug war is not about public health, though health
arguments are invoked in that war. Since the 19th century, substance
wars have focused on the particular drugs of those who lifestyles or
views constituted dissent against mainstream politics and culture.
Burke also points out that drug wars are often the harshest when
those mainstream institutions are in greatest turmoil or are failing
to deliver the goods even in their own terms.

Throughout our history, those groups that have been considered
outside the mainstream have been disproportionately targeted for drug
surveillance. Drugs associated in the popular mind with those groups
have been the most heavily penalized. It is not accidental that crack
-- a favorite of some inner city African Americans -- and powder
cocaine -- the choice of many stockbrokers -- have been treated
differently.

Groups associated with challenges to mainstream values can also
be portrayed as more threatening to the extent they are connected
with the consumption of drugs pictured as dangerous. And the danger
of the drugs in turn is in part conveyed by reference to who uses the
drugs. Thus in the 19th century, the American Psychiatric Association
described marijuana as a primary stimulant to homosexual behavior,
thus tarring with one brush both the drug and the sexual behavior.

Bill Bennett is a good example of this logic. He is comfortable
with alcohol while ardent in his condemnation of pot. His logic is
tortured but revealing. He argues that since the American people
accept alcohol, we should not return to prohibition. Nonetheless,
because alcohol's example shows that mind altering substances cause
death and making them illegal saves lives, the government should
continue to ban "drugs." But Bennett lets the rabbit out of the hat
here. Alcohol is also a drug. Accepting alcohol while banning pot is
really an attempt to foster and build upon a sense of a God-fearing,
hard-working middle America versus deviant hippies and welfare bums.
It is another part of ongoing cultural wars.

But some liberals have done their own funny dance around this
issue. Some simply disregard these issues or seek to ape the
conservative agenda in hopes of regaining their political prominence.
Their notion of political prudence is to focus on class, not on the
divisive and controversial life style issues. Or they even endorse
punitive drug laws. After all, they argue, public health is a
legitimate concern and they best not be caught on the side of drugs.

Yet this war has not advanced public health. In addition, the war
squanders increasingly scarce public resources. Worse still, it
builds upon and adds to a public climate that blames poverty and
social inequality primarily on personal behavior. The discriminatory
way in which particular drugs are targeted and existing drug laws
enforced further deepen racial stereotypes and disable minority
communities. Once classified as drug felons, millions of minority
citizens find it increasingly impossible to get jobs and are denied
the right to vote in many states. The drug wars play a major role in
disabling the political coalition on which progressives depend.

Drug war rhetoric that blames pot and crack for inner city
poverty may comfort some hard-working (alcohol-consuming) working-
and middle-class citizens, but it does so at a cost even to them. The
police may not harass and repress them as much as they do inner city
minorities, but the very rhetoric or the drug war now feeds the
corporate assault on the free time of middle class Americans. Hard
work becomes the all encompassing moral value and the solution to all
that troubles the economy. Civil liberties and privacy for all are
increasingly challenged.

Mind-altering drugs will be part of any society. If our goal is
to limit their damage, presenting honest information about risks and
benefits, banning advertising of these substances, and providing
ample resources for treatment of addicts would be our priorities.
Punishment is appropriate when incapacitation -- for drugs or other
behaviors -- causes death or injury to others.

Part and parcel of such an orientation is accepting -- indeed
celebrating -- a world of more free time and free space for all, of
growing social, cultural, and ethnic difference. We are far from that
world and so our drug wars drag on.